Poor performance in 2025 WASSCE: Candidates still focused on memorisation, not analytical application — Chief Examiner’s Report

The Chief Examiner’s Report of the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) has attributed the poor performance of candidates in the Core Mathematics to students doing memorisation and not application or analytical application of what they learned.

“That accounted for their struggling at the exams and that accounted for their poor performance in the WASSCE.

“We are still studying and analysing the Chief Examiner's Report and will respond with improvement in the capacity of our teachers,” the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, told Council members of four colleges of education at their inauguration in Accra. 

Double-track system

The minister also said, aside from that, it was important to note that many of the candidates did not have adequate contact hours with teachers, “because of the almighty double-track system”.

“They spend less time with teachers, less time in the classroom than they should,” he said, adding that the government remained committed to addressing the challenges.

Mr Iddrisu announced that the government had secured $200 million from the World Bank to work to end double track under the Free SHS programme.

He commended St. Peter's Senior High School in Kwahu in the Eastern Region for being one of the first schools that had been able to end the double-track system.

“So, I am going to reward them with infrastructure for going ahead of the government with their own intervention to end the double track system,” the minister assured the school.

He expressed concern that many of the students did not have adequate contact hours with the teachers because of the double-track system.

He said: “they spend less time with teachers, less time in the classroom than they should have.”

The double-track system was introduced in the 2018/2019 academic year (starting September 2018) in 400 senior high schools (SHS) across the country.

It was designed to manage increased enrolment from the Free SHS policy by dividing students into two tracks (Green and Gold) to use school facilities.

Quality assurance

The minister raised the issue of quality assurance and improvement as many of the SHSs were still in the same infrastructure, saying, “Not a dormitory, not a classroom, was added to the infrastructure, with the exponential increases in their numbers,” adding that, that naturally would affect the quality delivery of education.

WASSCE performance 

In the Mathematics paper for this year’s WASSCE-SC, 209,068 (48.73 per cent) had A1-C6; 52,991 (11.62 per cent) had D7; 52,145 (12.15 per cent) obtained E8, while 114,872 (26.77 per cent) had F9.

For Integrated Science, 220,806 (57.74 per cent) candidates scored A1-C6; 54,580 (11.85 per cent) had D7; 45,783 (11.79 per cent) recorded E8, while 61,243 (16.05 per cent) obtained F9.

Another core subject, Social Studies, had 248,538 (55.82 per cent) candidates scoring A1-C6, with 33,670 (7.38 per cent) candidates recording D7, while 40,608 (9.12 per cent) had E8, and 122,449 (27.50 per cent) settled for F9.

In English Language, 289,673 (60 per cent) of the candidates scored between A1-C6; 37,712 (8.18 per cent) had D7; 39,091 (9.23 per cent) had E8, and 54,294 (12.86 per cent) had F9.

A total number of 461,736 candidates, made up of 207,415 males and 254,321 females from 1,021 schools, registered for the examination.